Cases
Work
Klasen Development connects public records that are kept apart, by different offices and in different forms, and builds software around them: collecting the documents at a polite pace, extracting their text, matching records on case and parcel numbers, and publishing pages that tie each claim to its source. The cases below are examples of that work on land use, energy and data-center rules in a few counties. They show the method; they are not the limit of what it applies to.
Featured
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Reconstructing a solar project's path through three public offices
- Asked
- How much of a solar project's path through a town board, a county committee and the county's recorded agreements can be rebuilt from documents those offices already publish?
- Found
- The county's notice, minutes and recorded agreement share one parcel number, the town's agenda carried the project for months before that agreement and matches it only by its text, and the county board's final action is not in the record.
- Infrastructure siting
- Renewable energy
- Local government
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Rebuilding how a county's data-center rules were written: testimony, deliberation and two drafts
- Asked
- Why do a county's proposed data-center rules read as they do, and which way were they moving between two drafts?
- Found
- Six provisions changed between the September and October drafts, four of them tighter, and each change traces to hearing testimony, the commission's motion or the county's own reports, while both drafts remain proposals.
- Regulatory intelligence
- Infrastructure siting
- Local government
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Recommended by the town, refused by the county, then sent back: a subdivision in public records
- Asked
- Why did a county committee refuse a subdivision its town had recommended, and how did a smaller version reach the County Board's agenda within weeks?
- Found
- The committee's minutes gave two words, insufficient infrastructure, and its report to the County Board named the reason as the lack of sanitary sewer; the lot count fell before the referral, and the vote on the approval ordinance is not yet published.
- Land development
- Local government
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How one county paused data centers: a committee, ten towns and a county board
- Asked
- How quickly can one policy move across a county's public bodies, and can each step be shown from a document that body published itself?
- Found
- The county's pause on data-center permits went from a zoning committee's first vote through ten town boards and a public hearing to the County Board in about six weeks, with no application on file and no town opposed.
- Regulatory intelligence
- Infrastructure siting
- Local government
Infrastructure siting
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Reconstructing a solar project's path through three public offices
- Asked
- How much of a solar project's path through a town board, a county committee and the county's recorded agreements can be rebuilt from documents those offices already publish?
- Found
- The county's notice, minutes and recorded agreement share one parcel number, the town's agenda carried the project for months before that agreement and matches it only by its text, and the county board's final action is not in the record.
- Infrastructure siting
- Renewable energy
- Local government
Regulatory intelligence
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Rebuilding how a county's data-center rules were written: testimony, deliberation and two drafts
- Asked
- Why do a county's proposed data-center rules read as they do, and which way were they moving between two drafts?
- Found
- Six provisions changed between the September and October drafts, four of them tighter, and each change traces to hearing testimony, the commission's motion or the county's own reports, while both drafts remain proposals.
- Regulatory intelligence
- Infrastructure siting
- Local government
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How one county paused data centers: a committee, ten towns and a county board
- Asked
- How quickly can one policy move across a county's public bodies, and can each step be shown from a document that body published itself?
- Found
- The county's pause on data-center permits went from a zoning committee's first vote through ten town boards and a public hearing to the County Board in about six weeks, with no application on file and no town opposed.
- Regulatory intelligence
- Infrastructure siting
- Local government
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The terms under Wisconsin's data-center pauses: what the drafts set, side by side
- Asked
- Under Wisconsin's data-center pauses, what do the ordinance in force and the drafts in committee packets actually set, and how far apart are they?
- Found
- A template in one county's packet and a village's draft, both proposed, sit multiples apart on distance from farmland, only the village's draft rules on cooling water, and the template's notice clock would start at a developer's first phone call.
- Regulatory intelligence
- Infrastructure siting
- Local government
Local government
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Who moved two counties' data-center pauses: the sponsors, the towns and the votes on length
- Asked
- When two neighboring counties pause data centers with no application on file, who moved the pause, were the towns' endorsements independent, and what did anyone on the record actually push against?
- Found
- Jefferson's pause began with a county supervisor, the people who carried it to two town boards match names already in the county's own record, no one is recorded speaking against either county's pause, and the motions that failed in both counties were for a longer one.
- Local government
- Regulatory intelligence
- Infrastructure siting
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The town acted first: three Jefferson County permits, 77 to 125 days before the county's decision meeting
- Asked
- Where towns review a permit before the county decides it, how much earlier does a project surface at the town, what changes there, and what does the county's hearing hold that its decision does not?
- Found
- In three Jefferson County cases the town acted first by 77 to 125 days before the county's decision meeting, Watertown's still unreported, and the stormwater question, the demolition condition and the petitioner's reasons sit in the town and hearing minutes, not in the county's decision line.
- Local government
- Land development
- Regulatory intelligence
Renewable energy
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Five megawatts on prime farmland: where a small solar farm is contested in three Wisconsin counties
- Asked
- For a small solar farm on prime farmland in a Wisconsin county that zones its towns, where is the project actually contested: in the host town, in the county's own findings, or by a neighbor the county does not zone?
- Found
- In none of the three was the host town's vote the contest: Dodge denied one under its Land Use Code, naming no section, a neighboring city and its airport opposed the Jefferson farm its town supported, and Walworth's planners wrote out the state's farmland test before the town acted.
- Renewable energy
- Infrastructure siting
- Local government
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Two maps of solar in one county: the recorded agreements and the permits that rarely meet them
- Asked
- In a county that publishes its recorded solar agreements as a map layer, how often do the parcels under agreement meet the parcels that go before a town and the county for a permit?
- Found
- Rarely, as far as parcel numbers show: only four of the layer's parcels can be matched by number to a local agenda item in eighteen months, a floor since most solar items print none, and the two six-megawatt farms before their towns this year sit on parcels absent from the layer.
- Renewable energy
- Land development
- Local government
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One county, two towns, opposite answers: four Wisconsin towns take up solar in 2026
- Asked
- When a Wisconsin town takes up solar, what does its own record say that a county-level view cannot: whether it acted at all, at what size, and together with what else?
- Found
- In St. Croix County one town board chose in June not to act and another paused solar above 2.5 acres, with wind and batteries, for a year in September; in two towns elsewhere a solar rule came to the board beside a data-center one.
- Renewable energy
- Local government
- Regulatory intelligence
Land development
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Recommended by the town, refused by the county, then sent back: a subdivision in public records
- Asked
- Why did a county committee refuse a subdivision its town had recommended, and how did a smaller version reach the County Board's agenda within weeks?
- Found
- The committee's minutes gave two words, insufficient infrastructure, and its report to the County Board named the reason as the lack of sanitary sewer; the lot count fell before the referral, and the vote on the approval ordinance is not yet published.
- Land development
- Local government
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A 59-lot subdivision from the surveyor's draft to the county board
- Asked
- How far can a housing development be followed through a town and a county using only what those governments publish?
- Found
- The surveyor's dated draft, four unanimous town votes, the county committee's hearing and the County Board's conditional approval all appear in published records, under two names for the same plat, and nothing published since shows a final plat or recorded map.
- Land development
- Local government
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Lots that came back: a lapsed plat, a failed perc test and a county's slopes in town minutes
- Asked
- When a lot or a subdivision in a Wisconsin town comes back for a second vote, does the town's record or the county's say why?
- Found
- The town's: in three Jefferson County cases from 2026, a lapsed approval, a lot that failed its perc test and a slope the county might question are written in town minutes, while the county's papers show a plat approval and a petition returning.
- Land development
- Local government